Banjo Kazzoie - great, great platformer, charming, fun, and as beautiful as a 3-d N64 game can be...

Goldeneye - remember when FPS did ont focus on story? Ironic for a game with a movie license. Oh the good old days, great level design, great single player and multiplayer game..

The overrated :

DKC series on SNES - Miyamoto trashing these games was classic. Generic level design, generic enemies, unclear/sloppy platforms for jumping, camera zoomed in too far. Ick, the SNES had way too many games like this, but this one is famous and cherished, for some reason.

DK64 - this game is really boring, and DK controls like crap. Just do a backflip, and see what I mean....compare with DK Jungle Beat, ain't it great when internal Nintendo makes the Donkey Kong games!?!

Banjo Tooie - bigger, but it collapsed on itself. Boring game.

Jet Force Gemini - why was this game ever considered 'special'?

Perfect Dark - at the time it was considered graphicaly impressive, but now it makes your eyes bleed. The story was horrible.Again, like Tooie, more was less. Not a disaster, by any means, though.

Does anyone really want imPerfect Dark 2 and Banjo Nuts and Bolts from 360 as Wii exclusives? I sure don't.....

And free Radical died on the PS3. Can't say I care much for that either. They went story crazy with Fututre Perfect as well, and it ruined the game, somewhat.....

Hardcore, casual = marketing. The real divide is between arcade and narrative games.

I still think it was a mistake. Rare did some great things with Nintendo and they haven't been able to recreate that success with Microsoft and might never be able to, truth be told. That being said, I hope we see a Kameo sequel. I loved that game.

And I can't believe anyone would trash the Donkey Kong Country series. One of the greatest platformer series in video game history, IMO.

I played a bit of Nuts & Bolts at a game store and it actually upset me to be roaming around these beautiful worlds that were wasted for a racing game.

The impossible question is: Did Rare decline because they went to Microsoft, or were they in decline anyway?

I agree with Corbie, the DKC series was great. The enemies were far from generic, it's clear a lot of attention went into making these. I can understand why the style wouldn't appeal, but it was a distintive style. The level design is far from generic, there were many new ideas on display. These levels also had backdrops that were very original for the time (brambles, bee hive, fun fair etc.) There was a level which used inverted controls when you swam in the water. Some of these ideas were just weird, and I can understand why someone wouldn't like them for that, but they were far from generic. Rare always built upon ideas that already existed, they were far from innovators like Nintendo or Sega, but they did refine things very well. IMO of course.

After Bad Fur Day, Rare were pretty much in decline with people leaving them, so if you look at it in terms of their leaving hurting Nintendo in terms of new releases, then I would agree that they didn't hurt the big N much. Then again, consider the VC: Banjo Kazooie has gone to XBLA, Perfect Dark looks to be going that way, Conker has gone that way, and there is the chance that Goldeneye will, too. Now that is a detrimental effect to Nintendo!

You may be right but from the wrong reasons. I think you're a little to harsh criticizing Rare games. However, it is true that, after leaving Nintendo, no Rare game ever reached greatness. A studio is worth for the licenses it controls and the staff. I believe Nintendo correctly evaluated most of the key staff was gone and the licenses (Perfect Dark and Banjo Kazzoie) were not that valuable.

The comments about the over-zoomed camera and shoddy collision detection are valid...DKC is one of those series that's the victim of rosy retrospection--it was so friggin' gorgeous and hyped (remember that VHS tape Ninty sent out in mid-'94?), but going back and playing any of the games in the series now is kinda depressing. The collision point on the top of an enemy on a jump, watching a barrel hit a wall and open a cave....I dunno, it's tough to describe, but the game looks more like a bunch of cut-outs being moved around and less like everything is animated, a-la Super Mario World or Contra.

I don't think "Nintendo should have kept an entire studio so that it could have the rights to rerelease its old games" is enough of a reason, as good as the old games may be -- not that anyone has said that word for word, but it seems to be the idea. It's sad to see Perfect Dark going to XBLA, but you know, whatever. We had it on N64 first, and the Wii has no shortage of FPS's in the works with Conduit, Red Steel 2, and Modern Warfare 2.

I find it interesting that everyone thinks of SNES and N64 titles when they think of the end of Rare. Very few seem to recall that it was during the GameCube era that Nintendo ejected the company. And that the reason why Nintendo ejected them was that all the key staff left for greener pastures. Without those key people, Rare was a husk of the company it once was.

IMHO, Nintendo was right to eject Rare. They weren't bad by any means, but they were not the innovative company that Nintendo needed. Their track record since the sale of Rare has proved that out, with most of the Rare games falling flat. (Viva Pinata being the exception that proves the rule.)

In hindsight, Nintendo should have stipulated a usage-rights contract for the back library of games when they sold Rare. But that oversight has not been terribly detrimental to Nintendo, regardless of how much it irks fans.

Firstly, Nuts and Bolts was pathetic compared to its predecessors, Greatest platformers this Gen are on PS3 in the form of Ratchet and Clank.

Secondly You're right that Rare was declining but they havent got better they have sort of meandered in being an OK game publisher ever since.

Nah Nuts and Bolts is one of the only games this gen to move it's genre forward. Ratchet and Clank doesn't do anything for the genre as a whole just like Super Mario Galaxy didn't do much for the genre.

Those are both fine games but Rare hit the duck on the bill with Nuts and Bolts.

And of course they've gotten better. They killed one Nintendo franchise and almost killed another, anything other than that is an improvement.Now they're back to making quality software again.